Kristen Stewart Confirms What We Suspected About Robert Pattinson's On-Set Behavior
Not everyone climbed aboard the "Twilight" train, with its glittery vampires, themes of forbidden and undying love, the usual good and evil tropes, and questionable ideas about the power of women. Yet the five movies based on Stephenie Meyer's four books, while receiving mixed critical reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer scores range from 25% for "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1" to 49% for the first "Twilight" movie) did well enough in theaters between 2008 and 2012 to become a bonafide hit and a genuine pop culture sensation. If you were a tween in the late '00s, "Twilight" was a major part of your life and maturation — for better or worse.
Not only that, you could say it catapulted reluctant famous people Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson to stardom. The young actors previously had relatively low-key careers — except for when Pattinson portrayed Cedric Diggory in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," a role that actually brought him to the attention of the producers of "Twilight" in the first place. The two had enough chemistry to carry the film, and even dated for several years as a result of their meeting on set.
Years after the final chapter of "Breaking Dawn" hit theaters, Stewart opened up about Pattinson's on-set behavior, explaining why the two got along so well on the set of their blockbuster films.
Pattinson and Stewart's similar acting approaches buoyed the films' success
In a New Yorker interview from the fall of 2021, Kristen Stewart swooned to show her reaction to Robert Pattinson's audition when she said, "It was so clear who worked." She also explained that the two had similar approaches to acting in the first movie — his was what she called an "intellectual approach that was combined with 'I don't give a f*** about this, but I'm going to make this sing.'" She then recalled telling Pattinson that she felt the same way. The actress then pointed out that the two were not overly experienced — she was just 17 at the time, and Pattinson was 21. "And, whatever, we were young and stupid and, not to say that we made it so much better, but that's what it needed, and that's what anybody playing those parts needed to feel," Stewart continued.
Their similar viewpoints contributed not just to the success of the films but to the couple's budding romance. Today, Stewart is about to marry Dylan Meyer (per Page Six), but she still appears to harbor sentimental feelings about her relationship with Pattinson. In an interview with radio jock Howard Stern in 2019, after he noted that dating your co-stars might be a mistake, she said simply, "There was nothing I could do."
The actors had chemistry from the start
On a recent episode of the Big Hit Show podcast, director Catherine Hardwicke shared her side of the story. She spoke about the difficulties of finding the right leading man for "Twilight," describing the character of Edward Cullen as "ethereal," "brooding" and "iconic." Upon auditioning Robert Pattinson at her home in L.A., though, Hardwicke quickly saw that he would be the Edward to Stewart's Bella Swan, whom Hardwicke was building the movie around. And the actors apparently clicked immediately.
During that first audition, Pattinson and Stewart performed a bedroom kissing scene — one so passionate that Pattinson fell off the bed. "I'm like, 'Dude, calm down.' And I'm in there filming with my little video camera, whatever," Hardwicke said. "And at the end, Kristen was like, it has to be Rob...But I could tell they had a lot of chemistry, and I'm like, 'Oh my God.'"
This chemistry easily translated to a supportive feel between the actors on set. Film editor Nancy Richardson recalled, "I just remember seeing in daily scenes where they would do a take and he would throw a tree across the meadow and then stomp away. Then Catherine would say 'cut,' and Kristen would go up to Robert and say, 'So what was wrong with that? That was great! What was wrong with that?' Kristen was kind of like his encouraging coach all the time when he seemed to feel as if his performance wasn't good enough." Richardson noted that the dynamic between the two was real, and translated well to the big screen.
Fortunately, fans of the "Twilight" series can relive all that chemistry whenever they like through the magic of recorded film. The movies disappeared from Netflix in January (via What's On Netflix), though, so fans will have to look elsewhere for their fix.